#belgian ale

[nice-bright-colors]

Best things in life, cost $8 a pop.

Cherry Fog.

[auraeseer]

I guess if you're celibate, you make good beer . . .

[kahuna-64]

Pure project brewing

[jennaminerva]

my friend dropped a little quarantine gift on my porch🖤🤘

[formulac]

Cherry Wheat

My Nephew and I brewed last weekend.  Seems this is his last batch before going all electric brew kettle for his next recipe.  I agreed to help wire his AC control panel; and in exchange, will receive one of his high power burners.  My burner suffers from a 30K BTU syndrome and the new, 200K BTU rocket will be a nice addition for brewing the next batch.

For the cherry wheat, or beer at all, I'm not a big fan of adding fruit into the batch.  But he has his tastes and wants to enter a home brewing competition near his home.  So the added 7 lb of brewing cherries more than doubles the price of the grain bill.

Additionally, we brewed a Belgian several weeks ago that I’ve included images.  One I lovingly call Frankenstein.  It started off as a session ale but after adding a lot of honey into the secondary, we figured the ABV goes much beyond the style guidelines of that beer.  That all grain recipe called for spice additions of pepper-corns, ginger root, star anise and raw honey--most of which, after several weeks of fermentation are now undetectable to taste-sampling during last weeks brewoff meeting.

So keeping track,

Cherry Wheat, all grain, 11 gallons    --brew date, March 18

Kolsch, 10 gallons     --brew date March 11

Frankenstein, aka Sesion ale/Belgian  --brew date February 2.

None except the sesion ale-turned-strong Belgian, we sipped for a thumbs up.

[brandonsdrunkagain]

Grace and Grit Double IPA from Great Raft Brewing, The Revivalists Pale Ale and Muses Belgian Pale Ale from NOLA Brewing.

[whatchudrinkin]

Bend Does Belgian

I was at old Saraveza for the first time in ages, checking out the bottle selections while Sarah picked up tacos down the street, when the name Monkless Belgian Ales caught my eye. I hadn’t heard of them, but the cans looked nice, and I have a well documented love of Belgian beer. So I grabbed a few, for some laughs at the very least.

First up was Capitulation, a dry hopped Tripel, which the copy claims is what you come up with when everyone comes in looking for IPAs. It does resemble a dry, pale west coast IPA -- sprucey, sort of dank. But where you’d expect citrus, you get dried apricot. Where you expect a clean yeast flavor you get a bit of spice. Not exactly to style, but quite tasty. 

Second was an Imperial Peppercorn Wit, which I assumed would taste like a pile of garbage. It’s rare a Witbier really appeals to me. Too much pepper, too many cloves, oily citrus flavor -- imperialized it must be even worse. But it was sitting right next to the Tripel, so I threw it in the basket. I’m glad I did. Those not-monks really nailed it. As you’d expect, an Imperial Peppercorn Wit smells strongly of pepper upfront. But it’s followed by sweet citrus. And on the tongue it’s soft, with a slick of oily tangerine peel in the middle. But the finish is dry with cracked white pepper rounding everything nicely. 

I was expecting a couple laughs, maybe some passable pints, but Monkless really impressed. The brewery opened three years ago in Bend, Oregon. I’m adding it to the itinerary for our next visit.

[sagebrewingco]

Sagebrewingco.tumblr.com

Allagash Brewing Company Hoppy Table Beer (Dry Hopped Belgian-Style Ale) 

One of the goodies I picked up from AleTales bottle shop the other day. I popped one open to try it that same night and it did not disappoint! I Didn’t include pics of the beer-in-glass with this post because I used some photography equipment I got from work for these pictures and the lighting is much better than the ones I snapped the night I tried this lovely table beer. Maybe I will post the beer-in-glass pics separately, or just altogether take them over again.

Cheers!